On Oct 10, 2012, at 9:09 AM, Ben Laurie <b...@links.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 1:44 PM, Guido Witmond <gu...@wtmnd.nl> wrote:
>> Hello Everyone,
>>
>> I'm proposing to revitalise an old idea. With a twist.
>>
>> The TL;DR:
>>
>> 1. Ditch password based authentication over the net;
>>
>> 2. Use SSL client certificates instead;
>>
>> Here comes the twist:
>>
>> 3. Don't use the few hundred global certificate authorities to sign
>> the client certificates. These CA's require extensive identity
>> validations before signing a certificate. These certificates are
>> only useful when the real identity is needed.
>> Currently, passwords provide better privacy but lousy security;
>>
>> 4. Instead: install a CA-signer at every website that signs
>> certificates that are only valid for that site. Validation
>> requirement before signing: CN must be unique.
>
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-balfanz-tls-obc-01
Sorry, I hit accidentally hit "Send".
The issue with any sort of client-side certs is private key availability,
and in particular moving it from client machine to client machine. (I
personally use about 4 different computers and three phones/tablets. I
need a secure, privacy-preserving mechanism to synchronize my key store.)
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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